


Chaos: 31 Hours

by WakeUpDreaming



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Dorks in Love, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Power Outage, Sleepovers, Team as Family, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:45:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5268398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WakeUpDreaming/pseuds/WakeUpDreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happy and Toby finally get together, and they plan on telling the team. They really do. The problem is their job gets in the way. Every time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chaos: 31 Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Potential Quintis prompt: Established Quintis is forced to spend the night at another team members house."

Tuesday, 11:00 pm

Happy rolls over, dropping an arm to her forehead. She can’t push the stupid, half delirious smile off her face. Toby kisses her shoulder, wrapping an arm around her waist.

“And to think we could have been doing this for years,” Happy says. She gets a little giddy, laughing. “Damn, that was - damn."

Toby pulls her close and moves her arm out of the way, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her nose. “But we can do it now,” he murmurs. He punctuates his sentence with a kiss to her lips, hot and deep and god, she’s still a little annoyed that he’s such a good kisser. "As much as we want."

She runs her hands down his arms, kissing him again, because now that she can she doesn't want to stop. “Yeah, we can,” she says. She’s talking a lot more game than she can give right now, though. She’s wiped out. From the mission over the past week to the heated argument that resulted in Happy basically jumping on Toby until he made her talk, she’s only got about 3% battery power.

“You’re falling asleep,” Toby says, throwing the blanket on top of her. “We can talk more in the morning, okay?”

“Less talking, more of that,” Happy mumbles.

“We can do both,” Toby says. Happy thinks he kept talking, but she’s asleep in his arms within a few seconds.

* * *

 

Wednesday, 6:30am

She wakes up the next morning to find Toby wrapped around her. She’s never been a cuddler – usually it’s just annoyed the crap out of her – but right now she’s comfortable.

“Morning,” Toby says, his voice rough with sleep.

Happy turns in his arms. “Hi.”

He smiles down at her, that expression that used to make her want to run and hide resting so beautifully on his face. “Hi.”

She kisses him lightly and then rolls out of his arms. “I’m taking a shower before work.” She drops the blanket off her shoulder as she walks into the bathroom. Toby’s still in bed. “You coming or what?”

She’s pretty sure she’s never seen him move as fast as he does right then.

He’s absurdly chatty in the morning, going on about their day and what the team might be expected to do this time as he washes her hair. She’d tell him to stop talking, let them just relax in the moment, but she’s worried he’ll stop washing her hair if she does anything, so she lets him keep going.

She accidentally nails him in the face with the shower head which leads to Toby poking her in the stomach until she apologizes, and that leads to Happy yanking him close to her and kissing him until they’ve both given up on the showering thing.

“We still have an hour before work,” Toby says, “we can be late.”

“Yup, stop talking, come back here,” Happy says. They stumble out of the shower and back to the bed, the two of them falling and moving together like they’ve done it for years.

Happy’s got to say, she’s pretty damn pleased with the way all of this turned out.

It’s 8:30 by the time the two of them get out of the shower for a second time, and they’ve both got multiple missed messages – two from Walter on Happy’s phone, and one from Walter and one from Paige on Toby’s.

Toby’s expression is pure annoyance as he listens to Paige’s voice mail. “She’s asking if I went to the tracks last night!” he exclaims. “How rude. I was doing something much more fun.” He winks.

“We’ll just explain it to them when we get into work,” says Happy, pulling a pair of black jeans from her drawer. She freezes, only one pant leg on. “Oh, we’re gonna have to tell them.”

Toby stares at her, standing in only his jeans. “That we do,” he says. His tone is cautious, like he’s trying to prevent himself from saying something that will bother her. “That we do.”

“Yeah,” Happy says, resuming her dressing. She zips up her jeans and throws a leather jacket on over her dark teal tank top. “But when?”

Toby looks visibly relieved. “Oh, thank god,” he says, “I thought you were going to ask me to keep it a secret or something.”

“You can’t keep a secret for the life of you,” says Happy, rolling her eyes and shoving his hat on his head. “I figure the sooner they know, the sooner we’ll get Walter’s lecture over with.”

Toby winces. “Oh, that’s not going to be fun.”

Happy shrugs and stands on her tip toes to kiss him, feeling warm and happy when he tucks her hair behind her ear.

“Let’s go.”

Happy throws Toby on the back of her motorcycle and takes him to work, speeding through the streets of LA until they reach the garage.

* * *

 

Wednesday, 9:00am

“Good morning, nerds and geniuses, not mutually exclusive,” Toby says.

“Way to make an entrance,” Happy mumbles out of the corner of her mouth.

“Get your butts in gear,” Cabe says, not appearing to register anything different from the norm, “we’ve got work to do.”

* * *

 

Wednesday, 1:00pm

Happy’s first attempt to say something about how she and Toby have stopped fooling around and have started "fooling around" is when they’re in the car.

“Hey, Walt?” she says. “I – we need to tell you something.”

“You being late?” Walter asks. “Don’t worry about it. It happens to everyone. Just try not to let it happen again, alright?”

Happy nods. “Yeah, but – ”

“Heads down!” shout Cabe.

They have half a second to process what he’s saying before bullets start flying. Everyone in the SUV flattens, getting away from windows, and Happy’s main thought is that she hopes Toby, Paige, and Sly are safe with the senator in the other vehicle.

“Push down the dummy,” Happy hisses across the place. Using multiple intel sources and just overall bullshitting on Toby’s part, they’ve managed to convince the assassins that the senator is actually in their vehicle. That lie’s going to be blown if the “senator” doesn’t react to gunfire.

Happy unbuckles in the seat and dives across Walter, whose eyes are locked on something on his laptop. She swings her legs around and kicks her leg up, pushing the dummy down just as another shower of bullets rain down on the car. The windows are protecting them, but Happy doesn’t have to be a mechanical genius to know that the window integrity will only hold for so long. She ignores the mild awkwardness of half sitting on top of Walter and just makes sure the fake person is shielded from the bullets.

It doesn’t exactly seem rational, but it's working.

“Get us out of here!” Happy yells to Cabe. The car forks off into another direction, the gun fire following them.

“That window’s about to shatter,” Happy says, "and we're only going eighty! Why am I not driving again?!”

“Because you’d get us killed faster than the guns, now shut up!” Cabe floors it, though, and they barely make it over a bridge before the gates close. The other vehicle, a beat to hell truck with three different people hanging out of windows and swinging guns, misses the gate closing and is stuck behind.

Happy swings her legs down again and exhales.

“Well that was stupid,” she says. “Now we’re on the other side of the banks.”

“Hey there, Toby here.” Happy feels a ridiculous flood of relief as she hears Toby’s voice through the coms.

“You guys okay over there?” she asks, adjusting the ear piece. “We had some rough waters for while.”

“We’re good,” Paige says. “Well, Sly just had a minor panic attack, but he’s good now. We’re at the state house – senator’s safe and about to present his speech.”

Happy slumps in her seat, falling down in the leg room area. “Why do all of us almost die at least twice a week?” she asks.

“Because we’ve got irrationally trying jobs,” Toby offers. “You guys are all okay, right?”

“We’re good,” says Walter. “And so is our dummy.”

Happy looks at him. “No thanks to you. I had to dive over you to flatten the thing.”

Toby laughs a little in Happy’s ear.

“Well,” says Paige. “We’re all meeting up at my house. We’re going to have a barbecue. Outside, in the sun, like we’re normal people who didn’t almost die today. My house at, say, five this afternoon?”

“Paige, that’s only four hours from now,” Walter says.

“Well then get a move on,” she says. “We’re already halfway back to the garage!”

* * *

 

Wednesday, 6pm

Happy sprints inside with a tray of ribs just as the sky opens up and floods most of Paige’s back yard. Ralph is right behind her with a bag of rolls.

“Made it!” Ralph says, beaming up at Happy.

Everyone else, on the other hand, are not as lucky. Toby makes it in mostly dry because of his hat, Paige trips over a chair and knocks Walter over, and Cabe and Sly bump into the umbrella and drench themselves.

“This is ridiculous,” Cabe says, shaking rain water off of himself. “You got something I could change into so I don’t drip all over your floor?”

Ralph looks up at him. “She’s a thirty year old lady with a ten year old kid. We don’t have any grown up man clothes.”

“Come on, boys,” Cabe says. “We’ll head to my place and grab something that isn’t dripping.”

“But you’ll miss dinner!” says Ralph, looking miserable.

“We’ll be back,” Sly says in a poor rendition of Darth Vader.

It’s five minutes before the lightning starts. Paige jumps at the first strike.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Ralph says, wrapping his arms around her waist, “it’s just electrical charges.”

Happy grins at Ralph. “That’s my kiddo.”

Toby blasts in from the bathroom. “It’ll survive!” he says, holding his hat up in victory. “It’s dry!”

“It should be,” Happy says, “you were in there for ages.”

“Five minutes twenty-three seconds,” Ralph corrects.

Paige taps him gently on the top of the head. “No need to be right all the time, honey.”

Then the power shorts out, and the rain increases, and Paige is scrambling for back up flashlights while Happy is checking the breaker.

She manages to fit into the tiny space in the tiny basement of Paige’s tiny house, and it takes her ten minutes before she even gets to the breaker. “Yep, no chance of bringing this back on. It’s gotta be at the telephone pole.”

Toby shifts a couple of boxes to give Happy enough room to crawl out.

“So, Paige probably doesn’t know how long it takes to check a breaker,” Happy says. She pulls Toby close. “Wanna fool around for a couple of mintues?”

Toby groans. “God, you could be any cooler?”

Toby’s hand is up her shirt in less than thirty seconds, and she’s laughing against his lips as she presses him against the wall.

“We should do this in all our off time,” Toby murmurs as Happy gasps. She’s annoyed to admit it, but god does he know what he’s doing. Soft touches against her skin that light her on fire, and the only way she knows how to urge him on is to kiss him harder, grab at his hips, whisper his name.

“You guys okay down there?” Paige yells.

Happy and Toby leap apart as the flashlight paints its way across the floor.

“Good!” says Toby. “Uh, we’re good. Good.”

Happy smacks him lightly in the stomach. “Yeah, the power’s got to be out across the board. Lightning might have fried a pole or something. It’ll be a while.”

They get a phone call a few minutes later from Walter. There’s reports of flooding around Paige’s house and all of the roads are cut off.

“Nobody’ll make it in or out of there for the rest of the evening,” Walter says. “But we can get to you if you –”

“We’ll be fine, Walter,” Paige says firmly. “I didn’t survive single motherhood for 10 years without being able to get through a couple dozen power outages. You guys have fun. We’ll eat barbecue and sing campfire songs or something.”

* * *

 

Wednesday, 9:00pm

Between conversations and Happy lighting the gas stove with a lighter Paige kept hidden in a drawer so they can heat up the potatoes, the dinner extends well into the night.

Ralph, despite being a genius, manages to get barbecue all over his face and shirt in the dark, and nobody notices until Happy gives him a high five over a mechanics joke.

“Mother of – get a napkin, kid!” Happy laughs as she rinses her hand with some of the rain water they’d collected when they realized the water was out, too. She tosses Ralph a damp paper towel and manages to hit him right in the face.

“Happy,” he whines from under the towel, but he looks so ridiculous that she just laughs harder.

“Okay, children,” Paige says. “It’s getting late. Ralph, wash your face, brush your teeth, and get in your pajamas. You can take a flashlight to bed if you want to read, but if I come in there at 9:30 and you’re still up, you’ll be in trouble, mister.” The stern tone is softened with the kiss on his head, and he gives Paige, Toby, and Happy all hugs before he runs off to the bathroom.

“I think he got barbecue sauce on my neck,” Toby says, wincing.

As he goes to wash his face, Paige slides over to Happy.

“You guys are so obvious,” she laughs.

There's a split second when Happy feels an impulse to deny, deny, deny. Instead, Happy shrugs. “I mean, you’re not wrong,” she replies. She turns to Paige. “You think anybody else has caught on yet?”

Paige scoffs. “Them? Please. And the main reason I figured out you two finally got it together was because you were making out in my basement.”

Happy’s eyes widen. “How did you – what?!”

“You guys were giggling for, like, fifteen minutes down there,” Paige says. “It takes a normal person about two minutes to check a breaker, and for you it would be under thirty seconds.” She offers a half grin. “But you two are cute. You guys deserve to be happy.”

Happy shrugs, unable to keep from grinning. “Yeah, I guess it was kind of a long time coming.”

Happy can tell when Toby bounds back into the room by the heavy steps. “Not to be concerned,” he says, “but Ralph and I may have gotten into the bubble bath.”

Paige and Happy turn around slowly to see Toby with a bubble hat and Ralph with a bubble Santa beard.

“Children!” Paige exclaims. “You guys are both children.”

Ralph nods. “That’s kind of the point, Mom. I’m ten.”

"He's not," Paige grumbles. She points down the hallway. “Clean yourselves up, and Ralph, get to bed.”

He grins, then runs up and gives Paige another hug, sure to rub his bubble beard all over her shirt. She ruffles his hair as Ralph runs off, and grabs a towel to wipe herself off.

“You’d think after the first time he did that I would predict it,” Paige says, wiping at her shirt. She looks up and gives Happy an amused smile. “But, then again, that’s what it’s like to have a genius kid. I don’t know how everybody else’s parents did it.”

“For what it’s worth,” Happy says, trying her hand at platonic affection by bumping her arm against Paige’s, “you’re the best parent I’ve ever seen.”

The expression of absolute relief on Paige’s face makes Happy almost uncomfortable with its intensity. “Really?” she says. “I just – I try my best and I don’t always know what to do.”

“But you always do it well,” Happy says. She smiles at Paige. “And you’re doing a nice job of post-parenting all of us. As much as we don’t want to admit it, we need it.”

Paige laughs and sets the towel down. “Well, it’s not the easiest, but at least you guys don’t projectile vomit every six hours.” She wrinkles her nose. “The first six months of Ralph’s life were rough.”

“Ugh,” Happy says, wincing apologetically.

Toby walks back in, finally looking like an adult without any sort of hat, bubble or otherwise, and a big grin.

“I got Ralph to bed,” he says, sounding extremely proud of himself. “Told him a story and everything.”

“What story?” Happy asks warily.

“A reenactment of Darwin’s discoveries,” Toby says. “He clapped.”

“Good to hear,” says Paige. “Also, you and Happy are pretty transparent.”

“We’re what?” Toby asks, looking confused. He looks at Happy. “What’s she talking about?”

“She knows about us,” Happy says. “Like, knows knows.”

Toby’s eyes widen so big it’s that he looks like a cartoon character. “How?”

“Again,” says Paige, “you guys are basically saran wrap.”

“Come again?”

“Oh, my god,” Happy says. “She heard us in the basement.”

Toby exhales. “Ah,” he says. “We need to get better at fooling around quietly.”

“Okay, that I didn’t know, and didn’t need to know.” Paige walks over to a closet and pulls out a bunch of blankets and sheets. “So I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that, and I’m going to set you guys up on our futon and pretend I don’t have any idea what fooling around means.”

“You have a kid,” says Happy, grinning. “I’m pretty sure you know what it means.”

Paige’s expression is a hilarious combination of disgust, exasperation, and amusement, and she just points to the other room. “Go.”

Paige digs around for the smallest pajama pants she has, and even Happy has to laugh when she puts them on and they are about six inches too long.

“Do you need a shirt?” Paige asks.

Happy shakes her head. “I think I’m good,” she says.

“Toby, I’ve got nothing for you unless you want Hello Kitty pajama bottoms,” Paige says.

Toby and Happy go into the living room and only throw a few pillows at each other as they make the bed, and Happy only gets stuck in the futon’s crevice once.

“My arm,” she says.

“What?”

“My arm’s stuck,” she grumbles, trying to get comfortable.

“That happens,” says Paige from the kitchen. “Push the futon up slightly. You should be able to get up.”

They do as Paige suggests and Happy stands. “Night, Paige.”

“Goodnight, you two children,” Paige replies.

Toby and Harry curl up together as the storm rages on. It’s been hours but it still feels like the lightning is right on top of them, rattling the windows and shaking the foundations of the tiny Dineen house.

* * *

 

Thursday, 12:00am

The temperature drops rapidly around midnight, and Happy wakes up shivering.

“Toby,” she whispers. He’s tangled in the blankets and she’s got a grand total of one sheet, and it’s only over her legs. “Toby, wake up and give me a blanket.”

“Hmm?” he says. “Yeah, come here, love you.”

Happy freezes. “What?”

Toby’s still dead asleep, as far as Happy can tell, but he throws the blankets over the two of them and pulls her in tight. “Warm now,” he mumbles, patting her arm gently. “Back to sleep.” He kisses her shoulder, then immediately begins snoring again.

Happy, on the other hand, is still trying to process the fact that she’s pretty sure he just told her he loved her.

She gets over it quickly, though, because he’s incredibly warm and she’s incredibly comfortable, and she dozes back off until morning.

* * *

 

Thursday, 6:30am

Toby wakes up with a ragged gasp, violent and terrified, and Happy rests an arm on his hand.

“Whoa, Tobes, you’re okay,” she says, recognizing a nightmare when she sees one. He looks at her wildly, the panic written all over his face. She reaches up and touches his cheek. “You’re okay.”

He blinks once, twice, and then relaxes as he finally sees her instead of whatever his brain dreamt up. “Sorry,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut. “Just – bad dream.”

Happy checks her watch. 6:30 in the morning. She can be awake now. “You want to talk about it?” she offers.

Toby stares at her in surprise. “You?” he asks. “You want to talk about something.”

Happy shrugs. “You just woke up looking like you’d been stabbed. I feel like talking about it might make you feel better. Calm you down."

Toby smiles at her. “Aw,” he says, “you listen when I babble about psychological stuff.”

“No I don’t,” Happy says, “you just talk so much I absorbed some of it.”

Toby's smile fades. “It was about when I died.”

“Your dream?” Happy clarifies.

Toby nods. “I just – I watched you and Walter from the glass, and you just stood there. And you watched me die.” He closes his eyes and shivers. Happy moves closer to him and wraps blankets around the both of them. He recounts more of the dream, where it shifts into watching the room fill up with water and seeing everyone else in the air on the other side, another dream where he gets shot in stomach and bleeds out alone.

“You’re here now,” Happy says. “You’re not – I didn’t let you die when you did almost die, and I’m not going to let you die ever, okay?” She kneels up to kiss his forehead. “You’re not allowed to die on me. Ever. Alright?”

Toby pulls her close and she ends up falling right into his lap. “If you don’t die, I won’t,” he says. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Deal,” comes a third voice.

Happy and Toby jump and turn around to see Ralph looking worried. “Are you guys okay?” he asks, walking up to the bed in his little fluffy slippers. “Because I had a nightmare about all the thunder too, and it's okay to be scared.”

“Thanks, kiddo,” Toby says, rubbing at Ralph’s hair. “I’ll keep that in mind. That was very sweet of you.”

“Also,” Ralph adds, “there’s breakfast.”

“I deliberately didn’t listen to any of your conversation, but couldn’t avoid being woken up by it,” Paige shouts from the kitchen. “It’s pancakes.”

All the worry and fear that had been in Toby’s face melts into childlike excitement. “Pancakes!” he exclaims, standing up and swinging Ralph around. “It’s the best breakfast ever!”

Ralph giggles as Toby carts him off into the kitchen, and Happy follows after trading Paige’s too-long pajama pants for her skinny jeans.

“You guys sleep alright?” Paige asks, flipping pancakes.

Toby and Happy answer, “Yes,” in tandem.

“Good,” says Paige, putting a plate on the table, “because we’ve got a case and since they’ve cleared the roads and the flooding’s gone down, Walter has decided that we can shower and charge things at the garage.” She rolls her eyes. “Apparently power outages do not give us a day off.”

They eat with light chatter and jokes about what Walter would give them the day off for, until Walter calls and asks where they are.

“We’re coming!” says Paige into the phone. “Just let us eat.”

* * *

 

Wednesday, 8:00am

They bring extra pancakes for the other guys, just in case they forgot to eat again, and navigate their way through the aftermath of the flooding.

“Look!” says Ralph at every single fallen tree. Toby, though, enthusiastically, looks at every tree, because that’s apparently just the kind of guy he is, and Happy can’t help but smile.

“Alright, guys,” says Cabe as they walk in the door, “that senator from last night? Turns out he had another attempt on his life. It wasn’t just that information he was dispensing – it’s gotten personal. We have to get him to a safe house and find out who has been bugging his house.”

“They’re bugging his house?” Paige asks.

Toby and Happy roll their eyes as Walter says, “You would have known that if you were here on time.”

“I guess this is a good time to annoy you,” says Toby, “so Happy and I are dating now.”

Walter looks so befuddled that he drops the pancake he was holding.

“I am not comfortable discussing your romantic status at this time and would prefer to pretend that this has not happened.” He says this in the most deadpan, blank way, so Happy credits that to why she falls against the couch laughing so hard she can’t breathe.

“What just happened?” Sylvester asks as he walks into the garage.

“Toby and I are dating, Walter is uncomfortable, and Paige made pancakes,” Happy chokes out. “Anything else?”

“Nope,” says Toby, banging Cabe on the back where he’s choking on what Happy assumes is a pancake, “I think that’s enough chaos for one day.”


End file.
